Yup. Happy 9-02-10.

This post is going to be mostly photos (and video) and not so much on the words. ‘Cause it was really all a blur. (A very, very fun blur.)

We were really excited and to be there. Can you tell?! Mike was really pleased with our seats too. (Totally made my day to see him so surprised!)

We got to meet Corey Taylor and the rest of the guys from Stone Sour. I got the cover of their CD single autographed.

The Jägermeister stage featured: As Summer Dies, Hail the Villain, New Medicine, Airborne and HellYeah. Hail the Villain was freakin’ amazing. They’re big in Canada but haven’t made as much of a name for themselves here in the US yet, unfortunately. As Summer Dies (a local Buffalo, NY band) was pretty great too.

The main stage was: Halestorm, Stone Sour, Avenged Sevenfold and Disturbed.

I liked Halestorm pretty well; Mike and I agreed their drummer, Arejay Hale, is freakin’ amazing and SO fun to watch.

Stone Sour, sadly, fell a little flat. Still totally worth seeing … but somehow they seemed sort of disinterested in performing? Maybe it was just me.

A7X flat out stole the show. Check out how they opened their set…

Click here to view the embedded video.

(Uh, yah. That may have been me screaming when the guy jumped out of the rafters there.)

A7X’s tribute to The Rev was a tear-jerker. Mike Portney (the drummer from Dream Theater) really held his own though, and it was great to see fans giving him a warm welcome.

While I think A7X could have easily carried the show themselves, getting to see Disturbed was just a bonus. I can’t believe this year marks the 10-year anniversary of The Sickness being released.

Yup. Happy times.

P.S. There are more photos on my Flickr photoset for Uproar Fest – here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I am SO. FREAKING. PSYCHED!

This will be Mike’s 10th time seeing Disturbed. (Not necessarily on purpose; they have just happened to play at several festivals — Ozzfest, Mayhem, etc. — that he’s been to over the last several years.) He promised me about 5 or 6 years ago (when he’d only seen them maybe 2-3 times) that he would take me to see them. For a whole variety of reasons, it never happened.

It was really purely a whim when Mike told me to check the dates that Avenged Sevenfold and Disturbed were playing. (I don’t think he realized it was a “fest”; I know I didn’t.) When we saw all the bands that will be playing … well, it was just a MUST.

Sunday, we stopped at Giant Eagle’s Ticketmaster counter to pick up the tickets. Mike stayed in the car with Little Man (we were on our way home from church) while I ran in to get them. Again, on a whim, I asked the clerk to check if there were any good seats left at a reasonable price (I was assuming most of the good tickets would be gone with only a week till the show). We would have been just as happy with lawn tickets, but I managed to get seats in the front of section 200 (dead-center)!

The best part? Seeing Mike’s face when I went back out to the car and told him the seats I got. Total jaw-drop reaction. It completely made my day!

Ink Assassins is doing $20 tattoos. (Ya know, in case you care.)

Me? I’m feeling snarky. Snarky may not even cover it. I have a full blown case of “WTF is it a full moon or did everyone on this planet suddenly turn into idiots”-syndrome.

The other day, I had the unfortunate chore of having to go into a WalMart. You want to see me go into an extreme rage? Put me in a busy WalMart store.

Hordes of people shuffling around like zombies with glazed over eyes, staring at the ceiling and randomly stopping every three feet to check out the amazing roll-backs on Snuggies and snack cakes (like, OMG). Meanwhile you’re just trying to run in and out and grab some batteries or something and you’re tripping over these asshats left and right. MOVE for God’s sake.

Oh my good Lord don’t EVEN think you’re going to try and buy a Sharpie this time of year … the back-to-school aisle is treacherous. Misbehaved little snots hanging off the shelves, laying on the floor and/or running into people with the 750-pound pile-o-crap in their parent’s cart.

I think maybe I should start avoiding human contact in a retail-setting. People seem to lose their minds when shopping. (Black Friday stampedes, anyone?) I swear I’m ordering everything from Amazon.com from now on, including toilet paper. (Don’t believe me? They totally sell it.)

Apparently I’m getting crotchety in my old age. Old age being 28. Woo. I always was an overachiever and ahead of my peers.

(By the way, this is meant to be tongue-in-cheek. Lighten up.)

(Note: this isn’t a paid endorsement. No one at PNC is paying me or giving me anything. This is purely my opinion – I was so pleased I had to share!)

I stopped in earlier today to discuss some options with my accounts. The bank representative helping me today introduced me to the PNC Virtual Wallet, a program directed at Generation-Y. This program has been around for a few years, but it was entirely new to me (I’ve been living in Tennessee –a non-PNC state– for the last 3 years). I think it’s an absolutely brilliant setup.

Here, watch the video; it explains the system much better than I can:

Click here to view the embedded video.

So, you have three accounts: Spend (a free checking account), Reserve (an interest-bearing checking account), and Growth (a high-yield savings account).  All these accounts are connected and you’re able to transfer money among the accounts as much as you want (with the exception of Growth/savings, which has a maximum of 6 outbound transfers per month). All of the accounts have a $0 minimum balance. There’s built-in overdraft protection (if you spend too much of your Spend account, it pulls from Reserve without charging you any fees).

Even better, you get tools to analyze your spending and track your bill payments. It’s much like Quicken, Microsoft Money, or Mint … but without the added expense of buying third-party software, or the hassle of having to connect your accounts into a third-party website.

The only downside to the program is that you can only write three checks per month (any additional checks cost $0.50 each). PNC Virtual Wallet is squarely aimed at the generation that’s married to their debit cards and online banking. (Which, I think, is a lot of us these days.) Normally I only write one check per month for my storage unit rental, so it’s perfect for my purposes.

Did I mention PNC Virtual Wallet also has an impressive iPhone app?

The tech behind this program is really … well … cool. It’s nice to see an “old-school” bank stepping up like this. Kudos, PNC.

Isn’t he cute? He lives in a bowl (for now; hoping to get something bigger later) on my computer desk. He keeps me company while I work. I’m calling him Morimoto, which was a suggestion from by boyfriend’s brother. I thought it was funny.  (Ya know, as in the Iron Chef?)

I had gone to a local aquarium store, Buzz ‘n B’s, first to look at fish, but they were all out of bettas. So I stopped in to Petco on the way home and they had a huge selection, which really surprised me. I knew they’d started carrying crowntail bettas a while back, along with the “standard” veiltail. But now they also have halfmoons (which mostly were more like deltas, really), plakats, and double tails. (Morimoto is the latter, if you couldn’t tell.) If you have no idea what I’m talking about, check out these articles about betta tail forms.

Incidentally … did you know there’s an organization called the International Betta Council (IBC) that is to bettas what the AKC is to dogs? Seriously. (I’m a former member … Yes. I AM a super-geek.)

I hadn’t been there since a school field trip, probably 15 years ago now. (Hard to believe it’s been that long!)

The exhibits were lovely: majestic big cats, a huge array of primates, and even an aquarium! Unfortunately, we ran out of time before we got to see The Rainforest, so we’re going to have to make a trip back to see that.

They have an exhibit with animatronic dinosaurs displayed right now too. Little Man found them a little intimidating, especially when they roared, but he had so much fun exploring and seeing everything else!

My very favorite exhibit was “Flutter!“, the butterfly greenhouse. The foliage and butterflies are just stunning. I happened to wear a green t-shirt, and I had butterflies hitching rides on my shoulder every time I turned around.

I also noticed that people wandering through the greenhouse seemed universally in awe. I think it’s humanly impossible to be anything but happy and delighted when surrounded by butterflies. Amazing such a tiny, delicate creature can elicit that type of reaction in people.

Wish every weekend could be like this…

I’ll never forget being at my high school freshman orientation, listening to all the girls quoting lines from the movie and “WhatEVER”-ing at each other. Growing up in a rural town, our lives were nothing like Cher and Dionne’s, but that didn’t stop any of us from emulating them.

For me, it was all about the clothes. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to a few super-short plaid, pleated skirts didn’t make their way into my wardrobe in those years. (Oh the shame… haha.)

I remember a phase of wanting a white Jeep like the main character, Cher, drove, so that I could ride around with the tops and doors off it. (“Did I show you the loqued-out Jeep Daddy got me? It’s got four wheel drive, dual side airbags and monster sound system. I don’t have a licence yet, but I need something to learn on.”)

OH how things have changed in just one generation! Cher had all the best things that kids of my generation desired. If we’re to believe what’s depicted in MTV’s My Super Sweet 16, apparently all the rich-kids today want BMWs, Mercedes, Bentleys, and all sorts of super-luxury cars. They’d laugh at Cher and her Jeep. What a difference just a few years makes! (Yikes.)

And speaking of what can happen in just a few years…

Oh Brittnany, how sad … we lost you far too soon. I’ll always remember you as Tai. (And “Molly” in Uptown Girls = love.)

God, I miss the 90s.

Life has been exciting recently, in stressful sorts of ways. (I’d much prefer blissfully mundane and take “boring” over this crap, any  day.) It seems nearly every aspect of my life is in an upheaval. I’m coping, but very exhausted. I’ll be glad when things calm down again.

My car got hit last week … that was fun. The woman drove off, but thanks to some witnesses who stuck around to talk to me, we got her license plate and tracked her down.

It’s not horrible but I would have been really mad had I just walked out to my car and found gouges in the bumper without knowing who did it. So now she’s buying me a new bumper cover. (Grrr.)

People, seriously … don’t hit someones car and just drive off. It’s a mega-asshole thing to do. Especially don’t do it if you have an easy-to-remember vanity plate — witnesses are BOUND to see you and turn you in. DUH.

So, needless to say, I have not been much in a blogging mood. I’ll be back eventually though, when things slow down. Really.